pain relief/management during childbirth?

mandi

pavlovs_dog wrote:

:rotfl: :rotfl:

i think i know who to call when i need a birthing partner

Be more than Happy, as long as I dont have to look at your BITS....:eek:

pavlovs_dog

clairec79 wrote:

Having someone you know and trust helps a lot - if you're in South Wales I'm available if you want to chat to someone and I know quite a few of the units if you want to know about the policies some of them have(I'm a student midwife)

am cardiff/vale of glamorgan based, so would probably end up in llandough or UHW when the time comes (although it will be a good few years yet!) does the CRI have a maternity ward?


thank you for you very informative reply :T

clairec79

Not CRI - Llandough is midwifery led now (and no epidurals) but only low risk women (have a homebirth they are fab)

TENS machine (UHW do let them out, so I'm sure Llandough do - but they have quite a high deposit, you get it back - but Boots is a lot cheaper initial outlay but you don't get it back) are 4 pads which are stuck onto your back which send little electrical impulses into your back (some have a boost buttom which send a continous pulse through a contraction - admittedly I got lost and had it continously through one contraction and up till the next and then not for the next one), when you can't feel it buzzing on your back you turn it up slightly - when I started in labour I could only have it on 2 or 3 but the time I was ready to push it was on 10 (the maximum) - if your partner takes it off your back tell him to turn it off first, the midwife nearly electrocued herself.

The cannula (needle in your arm for a drip) isn't always inserted, if you need on though they'll fit all drips through that one - only pain relief you need on for is an epidural.

Gas and Air kind of removes you from it (ever had gas at the dentist - same stuff) does make your mouth dry for the first so many puffs, I found it just took the edge off. Pethidine was the one which I found made me completely removed (I thought I was lying under a tree by a river in my garden, then realised I don't have a river in my garden and didn't know where I was - so kind of freaky for me)

crispeater

hey its free you might as well try the lot lol

dd i had GBS infection during labour and ended up having a general for a emergency c-section so cant really comment except the epidural i had an hour before hand was a godsend!

ds 12hrs and 3 1/2 bottles of gas and air later 1 shot of pethidine and i still ended up having a emergency c-section. although i was awake for this one and it was theeeeee most bizarre experience of my life!

when i was pg with dd i said i wanted all pain relief except the epidural as im scared of needles and the thought of something that large going in my spine gave me the jeepers.. once i was there it was GIVE ME AN EPIDURAL!!! lol
what you may choose now you will probably change your mind when you get there

i think if you think too far into it you might get scared of childbirth altogether lol

essexhoney

With DS - i had pethedine to start with and it made me really ill i was throwing up everywhere and i was so out of it (they only gave it to me an hour before i actually had him) i dont actually remember anything about it
Although the idea of the pethedine is it just relaxes you so you sleep in between contractions (at least that was how it was explained to me) i then had entinox (gas & air) during the contractions. DS was my worst birth experience.
With DD1 when i went in (in agony contractions every minute!) they attempted to send me home as their machine wasnt picking up the contractions :mad: Needless to say i got down to the car park and had to go back up to the labour ward again to be told that nothing was happening (i wasnt dialated at all) but they would give pethedine to try and help me through the pain :rolleyes: pain gradually got worse and they gave me entinox i gave birth 45 minutes later :rotfl: Again i was very drowzy from the pethedine but nowhere near as drowzy as i was with DS i can actually remember giving birth to DD1!
With DD2 i was in absolute agony but again i wasnt dialated they tried to offer me paracetomol and i told them where they could stick it They then gave me pethedine (made me very sick my poor OH was covered in it ) and entinox and put a TENS machine on me - the TENS machine did nothing for me at all (apart from give me severe back ache ever since using it :mad: ) By the time i gave birth to DD2 all i was using was gas & air. Which was by far my best birth experience i can clearly remember giving birth to her and i can clearly remember what was happening and being said right up to the second that i had her.

I said with all of them that i didnt want an epidural (didnt like the thought of being immobolized from the waist down) though with DD2 i do remember asking for one and was told by the midwife 'shut up you dont need it' :rotfl: needless to say she was right

Horasio

I didn't have time for pain relief. Once you know what the pain is, you can work with it.

Labour pain came in waves, so took it easy during the non painful bit

msmicawber

The thing I found that helped the most with pain relief was to keep moving - I just walked around during my labours and that and calming my breathing did the trick. I tried TENS the first time, but my labour was too quick and it didn't do anything. I tried a puff of entonox the second time, but it just made me dizzy which I didn't like, so I didn't bother with it again and just kept walking. I didn't have an epidural during labour, but had to have them afterwards each time in order to deliver the placenta. It didn't work either time, which was grim, but I remember wondering how anyone could stay still enough in a painful labour to have an epidural administered - ?

I must admit I've never liked the idea of pethidine as it's a mind-altering drug, rather than a pain killer, and I don't like the thought of a baby being born stoned.

mspig

i had full block epidurals for my first two births but decided to give the walking epidural ago with my third.

What a load of rubbish the walking epidural lost its effect every hour and the midwife kept saying you have to wait 20minutes inbetween wear off and having a top up so for 20mins per hour i was in pain, never got offered nothing else.
Then the midwife said after being in the delivery suite for 7 hours that i was not having anymore epidural yu will have to give birth without pain relief, and she was calling a doctor as the birth was taking so long, doctor came took bed apart then asked the nurse had i been given another dose of epidural she said no, he made her give it too me and then told her to get the gas and air and we would give it one last go before he had to use forceps.
Well my son was born within minutes after that. nearly 8hours after being going into the delivery suite.
But with my first two on full epidural block the first was born within 4 hours of start of labour and the second i had to have my waters broken and started off but once that had been done he arrived within 20minutes. Wish they all were that quick it was bliss.

As for any problems after epidurals ive had none.

But apparently i'm a wimp according to my two sisters who have 3 and 6 children and they both have had natural no pain relief what so ever with any of them. (no thanks id rather be a wimp)

Rachie_B

epidurals can be fab ,i had one when i had my eldest son ,i had developed pre eclampsia and so this helped to lower my blood pressure

my experience of them was fab,it numbed me completely and was great to see the contractions on the monitor and not feel a thing lol ,i just watched tv for hours

it wore off by the time the head was crowning so i knew when to push ,had that urge

they are not something to consider lightly as you DO here horror stories,bad backache afterwards,not numbing completely as you mentioned etc

But for me it was fab and i would have one again if i felt the need

however on son # 2 i used just breathing exercise for hours,then when i felt the pain was too bad i went onto gas and air OMG fab stuff ! ( i had tried it with my eldest but it made me feel sick )

at the end of the day ,keep your options open ,dont say you definitely wont have xyz cos when the time comes and you do end up having that kind of pain relief you may feel you have "failed"

Rachie_B

also forgot to say i tried a TENS machine with eldest son but didnt like the feeling,so before anyone hires / buys one try it out lol